This invention pertains to a method to remove pieces cut from a bar-shaped workpiece material by a cutting machine. The piece of the material to be cut off that lies behind the cutting plane in the direction of feed of the material is only gripped behind the cutting plane between gripping jaws as it lies on a machine table during the cut. Also, this invention pertains to an apparatus to carry out this process.
Possible cutting machines in this case are hacksaws, cold circular saws, band saws or similar.
In known processes and apparatuses of the type mentioned above, the material to be processed lies on the machine table and on a feed unit that is placed in front of it in the direction of material feed. In the process, the material is fed between cutting steps by means of at least two feed jaws that can be opened and closed perpendicular to the material feed direction and that can be shifted, if necessary through automatic controls, toward the feed unit and moved directly up against the cutting plane. These feed jaws are opened immediately after the material is fed and the gripping jaws are closed, but never after the cutting step is over, they are shifted away from the cutting plane by a distance equal to the stroke of the next workpiece and then closed again.
In this manner, the material can be immediately fed by the amount of the material length to be cut next after the cutting step has ended, and thus after the attendant opening of the gripping jaws, with the material piece just cut being removed from the cutting plane by the material behind it. Another process and associated apparatus involves the gripping jaws being able to traverse the cutting plane opposite to the direction of material feed so as to then grasp the workpiece material and to move it forward by the amount of the material section to be cut off next. In this case, however, the gripping jaws also stay behind the cutting plane, as viewed in the material feed direction, at all times during the cut. In this case, the jaws located in front of the cutting plane in the material feed direction can be fixed in the material feed direction, or they can share the feed work with the gripping jaws.
This invention relates to both methods as described above.
In these methods, longer cuts of material pieces can then be further processed by a sorting unit downstream of the cutting machine in the direction of feed, for example they can be shifted perpendicular to the direction of feed and be collected. For short material sections or slices, however, this kind of handling is not possible due to the lack of positional stability of short pieces, resulting in short pieces of this type only being dropped or transferred directly behind the cutting machine in a relatively haphazard fashion or dropped from the sorting unit into containers. Thus, to continue processing these short material pieces, they must be taken by hand from the containers, which is relatively cumbersome, and taken to further processing stations. This no longer meet modem requirements, which require automatic and ordered delivery of short material pieces as well so that these pieces can be automatically forwarded for further processing immediately.